“The body’s surface”

“the overwhelming spell that we continue to cast on one another, right down to the end, with the body’s surface, which turns out to be … about as serious a thing as there is in life. The body, from which one cannot strip oneself however one tries, from which one is not to be freed this side of death.”

And:

“[Jerry:] The operating room turns you into somebody who’s never wrong. Much like writing’. [Nathan:] ‘Writing turns you into someone who’s always wrong. The illusion that you may get it right someday is the perversity that draws you on. As pathological phenomena go, it doesn’t completely wreck your life.'”